Equipment
Is The Profoto Pro-D3 a Viable Alternative to Pro Packs?
I love Pro Packs and have used them for a number of years in my work. Their reliability, power ratios, and quality of light are unmatched, but so is their price. If you’re looking to get a new Profoto Pro-11 pack, you’re looking to pay about the same price as a nearly new Toyota Corrola – at the price point of $17,849, and that’s just for the power pack without the strobe heads. So, like so many other studio photographers, I’ve opted for the used market, buying Pro-7a packs that were released in the late 1990s. So when Profoto announced the Profoto Pro-D3 strobes earlier this year, my ears perked up; are these a viable replacement for those who are digging through the dwindling market of ancient light packs? I decided it was worth looking into.
The Profoto Pro-D3
The Profoto Pro-D3 is Profoto’s latest entry into the monolight market – explicitly tailored for high-volume studios that need a robust and reliable light built for heavy use. Available in two versions, a 750Ws version, and a 1,250Ws version, the Pro-D3 is described as a “relentless workhorse” by Profoto, promising the highest grade components available, assuring a long life with little to no maintenance. The Profoto Pro-D3 also offers 11 f-stop power adjustment ranges, dialed in through as low as .1 f-stop increments.
The Profoto Pro-D3 also comes with all the fixings you’d expect on a modern Profoto strobe. Built-in Profoto AirX connectivity, Bluetooth, 56W adjustable modeling light, TTL, and HSS all come standard and also includes a headphone jack if you prefer to use your own trigger system. Additionally, the Profoto Pro-D3 offers three flash modes – Eco, Boost, and Freeze. Eco is for your standard shooting, maximizing color accuracy while also maximizing the lifespan of the equipment. Boost mode gives you some extra power for faster recycling and output, and Freeze is for those situations where you need the shortest flash duration possible, going as low as 1/75,000th/sec (for the 750Ws version). With its quality capacitors, the Profoto Pro-D3 offers breakneck recycling speeds – under 1.5 Seconds when firing at the full 1,250Ws power.
The Pro Pack
Conversely, I often shoot with the dinosaurs known as the Profoto Pro-7a. At 2,400Ws, these relics in history were released in 1998 and offer very little in modern settings, but they make up for it with their supreme reliability. TTL? Absolutely not. High-Speed Sync? No way. Precision of power adjustment? We have a few dials requiring high-school math to determine your power output. But supreme reliability? Oh yeah.
When I first purchased my Pro-7a’s several years ago, I got them for about $1,000 a piece (with no strobe heads), with one needing service on purchase. I brought the broken pack to my local Profoto repair shop, and he proceeded to replace the burnt-out capacitor while telling me my Pro Pack once lived in a high-volume eCommerce studio – putting over 700,000 strobe fires on the body. He told me the Pro Pack has another 700K fires in it – if properly handled.
That, beyond anything else, is why I love my Pro Packs. Not only do they offer a blistering amount of power with pretty quick recycle times, but they also offer outstanding reliability.
Comparing the Profoto Pro-D3 with a Pro Pack
So, I placed an order for a Profoto Pro-D3 rental to see how it would hold up compared to a hardened fossil like my Pro-7a packs. In my limited testing, I was incredibly impressed.
The monolight design maintains an industrial feel to it, giving a lot of comfort in its reliability in the long term. Whereas some other cheaper strobes – from Profoto and other brands will be made of a plastic shell that might have some flex to it, the Profoto Pro-D3 felt incredibly robust in size and build quality. While the repair department at LensRentals.com (nor my neighbors) probably wouldn’t have loved me taking it through the ropes of firing it off a couple hundred thousand times, I have full confidence that the Profoto Pro-D3 would hold up every bit as well as a Pro Pack.
Positives
My time with the Profoto Pro-D3 was limited, but I was quite impressed with my week-long rental of the unit and quickly found some big perks over a Pro Pack system that I’d like to go through here.
Power Selection
Perhaps the biggest benefit when shooting with a Profoto Pro-D3 over a Pro Pack is the ability to drop your power down incredibly low – yes, low. A Profoto Pro-7a Pro Pack offers a power range down to 37.5Ws when set to its lowest settings. By contrast, the Profoto Pro-D3 offers the lowest power of 1.3Ws (with the 750Ws version) and around 2.5Ws for the 1250Ws version. This substantial drop in power offers some pretty unique benefits – most notably, the ability to open your F-stop so that you get a shallow depth of field while still lighting your scene with strobes over natural light. The effect can give you a very ethereal feel to your studio photography and offer a technique you wouldn’t be able to easily do with an old Pro Pack (I know newer Pro Packs have a larger range of power though).
Speed
With modern tech comes modern comforts, and one of those comforts is the speed of the Profoto Pro-D3 – both in recycle times and flash duration. I’ve already gone over the stats above, but when comparing those numbers to other strobes on the market, there are few monolights that can really match the speed of the Profoto Pro-D3.
Versatility
The power selection and speed aren’t the only things that set the Profoto Pro-D3 above much of the competition – especially in this comparison with a Pro7a pack. The Profoto D3 also comes equipped with Profoto Air technology, Bluetooth, High-Speed Sync, TTL, several different shooting modes, and a very respectable LED modeling light capable of output numbers of 6,300 lm with a CRI >92. While it might not be enough to replace your Aputure lights on set, it certainly has enough to illuminate a scene.
Size
I’d never be so bold as to say that the Profoto Pro-D3 is a small strobe, but when you make the comparison of size to a Pro Pack, you’ll see that this light is incredibly small and fits into the Profoto lineup as a whole pretty well. For comparison, I lined up the Profoto Pro-D3 1250Ws with a Profoto B1 and Profoto B10X, two strobes that are packing less than half the power of the D3. The Profoto Pro-D3 is a bit chunky by comparison, but it is by no means a massive light – and it is far easier to bring on set over a Pro Pack and heads.
Cons
No lights are perfect, and they always come with some shortfalls, though the Profoto Pro-D3 has very few faults from my limited experience. Still, let’s look at some of the faults when comparing the Profoto Pro-D3 to some older Pro Packs like the Pro7a.
Price
The most notable con for the Profoto Pro-D3 (and all Profoto lights, depending on who you ask) is the price. At $3,000 for the 750Ws version and $4,000 for the 1250Ws version, the D3 is a hard sell for many photographers. By comparison, when perusing the used market, you can find Profoto Pro7a packs in good condition in the $700-800 range and heads for an additional $600-700. However, you’re then left with a heavy pack and system that is hard to service if you’re not living in one of the major US hubs (LA & New York).
Flat Head
The final con is a matter of perspective—Profoto has been making flat-head strobes for a decade now and has seemingly abandoned the bulb-head platform. I’ve discussed this in-depth in a previous article, so I won’t dive into it too far here, but many pro photographers are still showing a preference for the dome head for better light spread. Honestly, I’d guess that 99/100 photographers wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in a blind side-by-side (with me likely being in the majority), but it’s still a lingering issue for Profoto loyalists. Let me know if you want that side-by-side quiz, and I might be able to put something together.
And that’s my brief breakdown of the Profoto Pro-D3. Do I think the Profoto Pro-D3 can replace the Pro Pack on commercial sets? Absolutely. My limited time with the light definitely proved that Profoto has made a high-powered and robust light that can hold up in extreme conditions. If you can fit the bill and live with the flathead design, the Profoto Pro-D3 is probably the best pro-level monolight on the market today.
